City folk

I've heard it said that Chicago is like New York but with nicer people. Having lived in both places and approaching the six month mark of my Chicagoland residence, I'd say that in general the description fits. (There are assholes everywhere, after all, and, yes, I am talking about the pituitary case who manages that motel just off I-80 in Youngstown, Ohio).

As an illustration, take the image above, the snapping of which required me to stand in the middle of a busy sidewalk in the Loop and strike a number of modern dance poses. Most of the passersby gave me what felt like a polite berth and kept moving. In New York (by which I mean Manhattan), I would have expected to get an aggrieved berth accompanied by an annoyed grunt or possibly a remark.

I loved living in New York, but I always suspected that people occasionally stepped in front of cabs so they could let loose with a Ratzo Rizzo "I'm walkin' here!" My own crackpot theory about this is that there's something about the crush of humanity on the island combined with the awareness that so many people want your space (despite the fact that their space is probably so much better than yours ever will be) that results in a kind of neurotic territoriality.

One time I took a date to a movie on the Upper West Side. The place wasn't even a quarter full when my companion and I arrived and we were standing near the back trying to decide how close to the screen to sit when a woman in her 60s approached us and barked, "Excuse me!" I moved aside so she could enter the empty row I had been unintentionally blocking. We watched her shuffle along that empty row (one of at least a dozen on that side of the theater) until she got to the center aisle, which she then followed to the treasured and magical seat down front, the one she had earned by asserting hierarchy over me and my date. We shrugged. The movie looked fine from where we sat.